Charter

J-GOP is a social and political organization that is more than 20 years old. Meeting at the East Side Kosher Deli in SE Denver for many years with 20 to 40 attendees on a regular basis. We welcome both Conservative and Republican minded Jews and non-Jews of any denomination to attend and become active members of our organization.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

A “secret” Facebook group of foreign correspondents and human rights activists quickly devolved into an anti-Israel hate-fest on Tuesday following the release of a new Israeli government report that cleared the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of wrongdoing in the 2000 death of a Palestinian boy.

The Israeli government report contests the claim that the IDF killed a Palestinian boy, Muhammad al-Durrah, in a famous 2000 incident in Gaza that helped ignite the Second Intifada.

Journalists and activists mocked the report, attacked the IDF, and claimed pro-Israel lobbyists were influencing the media coverage, in a private Facebook group for foreign correspondents known as the “Vulture Club.”

Peter Bouckaert, a senior official at Human Rights Watch, dismissed the report as “typical IDF lies.”
“As usual, it takes them a long time to really build up the falsehood,” wrote Bouckaert.

Bouckaert also blasted the New York Times for its coverage of the report.

“It really isn’t good journalism to write this up as if these are credible allegations when it is a pack of lies,” he wrote.
Correspondents from numerous outlets, including the Associated Press and the Agence France-Presse, also piled on.

“[T]he lobby uses all its strength and is able to push anything in majors [sic] English newspapers or in the NYT[imes],” wrote El Mundo reporter Javier Espinosa. “Israeli embassies call their contacts in all those newspapers and they agree to publish that information.”

“That reinforces lack of media credibility and conspiracy theories as we are being used as mouthpieces for propaganda,” Espinosa added.

Monday, May 20, 2013

A federal judge in Michigan has ruled that law enforcement officers were justified in muzzling the free speech of a group of Christians.

The Christians were standing on sidewalks at an international Arab festival in Dearborn, Michigan. In response to their signs and public preaching, a mob of Muslim youth gathered and pelted them with various objects.

Law enforcement officers intervened, but instead of arresting anyone in the mob they warned the Christians to cease their activities or be arrested.

The judge ruled that the mob violence justified the intervention by the officers against the Christians. See the WorldNetDaily story below (highlights added).

In other words, because the Muslim mob reacted angrily with violence, the officers had a duty to muzzle the speech rather than stop the violence.

Stunning.

The message is loud and clear: If you are a Muslim, and you object to speech you don’t like, you can react with violence, because government authorities will reward your violence by muzzling the speech you don’t like.

A federal judge has issued a startling ruling that suppressing Christian speech is allowed when Muslims threaten violence because they’re upset over the message.

The ruling from Judge Patrick J. Duggan in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan granted Wayne County’s motion for summary judgment of a lawsuit brought by a team of Christians who were badgered, bullied and targeted with garbage thrown by Muslims who disliked their message at last year’s Arab Fest in Dearborn, Mich.

Officials with American Freedom Law Center, who have been arguing the case on behalf of the Christians, also said the judge denied AFLC’s motion requesting that the court issue an order preventing the Wayne County Sheriff and his deputies from restricting the Christian evangelists from displaying their banners and signs on the public sidewalks outside of this year’s Arab Festival.

It is scheduled for June.

In his ruling, Duggan said, “The court finds that the actual demonstration of violence here provided the requisite justification for [the Wayne County sheriffs'] intervention, even if the officials acted as they did because of the effect the speech had on the crowd.”

The case had been filed by the AFLC after several Christian evangelists were violently assaulted by a hostile Muslim mob while preaching at the festival last year in Dearborn, which has the largest concentration of Muslims in the United States.

The lawsuit, which will be appealed to a higher court, alleged the county, sheriff and deputies refused to protect the Christians from the attack, and they threatened to arrest the Christians for disorderly conduct if they did not halt their speech activity and immediately leave the festival area.

Robert Muise, AFLC co-founder and senior counsel, said, “The First Amendment was dealt a severe blow today as a result of this ruling. Indeed, this ruling effectively empowers Muslims to silence Christian speech that they deem offensive by engaging in violence. And pursuant to this ruling, the Christian speakers are now subject to arrest for engaging in disorderly conduct on account of the Muslim hecklers’ violent response to their speech. In short, this ruling turns the First Amendment on its head.”

David Yerushalmi, AFLC co-founder and senior counsel, added: “This fight for our fundamental right to freedom of speech does not stop here. We have filed an immediate appeal of this ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. While Judge Duggan may have been the first judge to rule on this issue, he won’t be the last. Indeed, we are prepared to take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary because it is imperative that our free speech rights not be subject to mob rule. This is the United States, not Benghazi.”

The violence developed at the 2012 events when Christian evangelists walking on public sidewalks surrounding the event while carrying signs with biblical messages were assaulted with stones, bottles and debris by attendees of the festival.

The signs that brought on the attack included “Know the God of the Bible” and “Trust Jesus.”

Several of the Christian demonstrators walked away bruised and bloodied from the attack. Ruben Israel, the leader of the group, pleaded with law enforcement officials to intervene so that the demonstration could continue peacefully.

However, the officer refused and demanded the Christians leave the premises or face arrest for disorderly conduct.

Shortly after, Israel contacted AFLC, which filed a federal lawsuit against Wayne County and several officials from the Wayne County sheriff’s office. AFLC charged that the officers failed to uphold their constitutional duty to protect the Christians.

A video has been released of the 2012 confrontation that explains authorities not only failed to protect the Christians, they ordered them to leave the Arab festival under threat of arrest for “disorderly conduct.”

However, not one Muslim was arrested for the attack, which left several members of the Christian group injured, the video says.

The video, and a related complaint, showed the crowd – reminiscent of a rock-throwing “intifada” scene from the Middle East – hurling a dizzying barrage of objects at the Christians, who were standing passively with their signs.

WND later learned that the Christian crowd had been carrying a pole with a pig’s head attached to the top, further angering the Muslim crowd. At the beginning of the video, Christian street preachers shout, “God is good, and God is not Allah!”

A the 2:17 mark of the video, the mob can be heard screaming: “You want to jump ‘em? C’mon, let’s go!”

One boy yells, “Let’s beat the sh-t out of them!”

A girl shouts, “Go home! Do you understand English?!”

Despite the attacks the Christians endured, a man identified in the video as Deputy Chief Dennis Richardson of the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office tells them, “You’re a danger to the safety right now.”

Officers claim they don’t have the manpower to protect the Christians at the festival.

“Your safety is in harm’s way. You need to protect everybody,” said Deputy Chief Mike Jaafar of the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office. “You do have the option to leave. I just want to make that clear.”

Israel replied, “You have the option to stand with us” as Jaafar walked away, leaving the Christians to the mob.

When police leave, the crowd continues harassing the Christians and screaming profanities.

Then police begin escorting the Christians away from the crowd.

Richardson tells Israel: “We have the responsibility of policing the entire festival, and obviously your conduct is such that it’s causing a disturbance and is a direct threat to the safety of everyone here. Someone could get hurt. You already have blood on your face. One of the festival people, one of my officers, anybody can get hurt. Now we’re going to escort you out.”

Israel explains that the mob throws things and becomes more aggressive when police leave the scene.

“Part of the reason that they throw things on someone is because you tell them stuff that enrages them,” Richardson argues.

AFLC said the Christians were wearing shirts with Scripture quotes and Christian messages.

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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

As Republicans, we have an internalized belief in the rule of law and as Jews, we
understand we were given a Covenant by G-d that includes laws for all of humanity
as well as some special rules intended to bring us closer to Hashem.
Sometimes it is difficult to understand why things happen.
Politically, we saw the re-election of a candidate who promised to change America
as we know it (higher unemployment, socialized medicine, undefended embassies, higher
energy prices, lower property values, more illegal aliens, restricted gun rights
and more and more government).

Spiritually, we are inundated with news about abductions, stabbings, shootings,
volcanoes, earthquakes, avalanches and other bleeding-leading headlines. We even
face personal obstacles like unemployment and underemployment.

Yet, G-d has a plan, we just don't know what it is.
When so many are looking to more government for a solution, they may be missing
the message being sent.

Join us to hear about keeping faith in troubling times. Together, we can speculate
on what the message is and how we might bring about change for the better.

We hope you can join us on May 22nd.
Sincerely,

Dan Kopelman
J-GOP interim President

Help us expand our ranks by asking others to text "JGOP" to 22828 to be added to
the email list.
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May 22nd Speaker: JOI Rabbi Zev Pomeranz

Rabbi Pomeranz, a native of Monsey, NY, has a deep love of learning. In addition
to his extensive religious educational background, Rabbi Pomeranz attended Yeshiva
University where he completed undergraduate and postgraduate studies, majoring in
psychology and secondary Jewish education. Rabbi Pomeranz has taught students from
remarkably diverse backgrounds, ranging from beginners at Aish Jerusalem, to advanced
religious scholars.

John L. Work is a graduate of California State University at Long Beach. He worked
for twenty years in law enforcement service and thereafter for nearly two years
as an investigator with the Colorado State Public Defender's Office. He has been
published in The American Thinker, Front Page Magazine, Liberty Ink Journal Magazine,
and has written for the David Horowitz Freedom Center's NewsRealBlog. He lives with
his wife in northeastern Colorado, where he is writing his seventh book.
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Wednesday, May 1, 2013

By Judy Aron, January 24, 2013

LETTER: CT rabbis have a misguided view on the issue of 'gun control'

I am disappointed in the response of the rabbis in the Ledger last week in regard to what is so glibly referred to today as 'gun control' ("Our Rabbis Respond: The Jewish View of Gun Control," Jan. 18, 2013). What 'gun control' really is and always has been, is the government's initiative to disarm one segment of society while leaving another part of society armed. In that context 'never again' becomes meaningless because those who are disposed to protect their families and themselves are often denied the means to do so.
Rabbi Dovid Bendory of Jews For The Preservation Of Firearms Ownership (JPFO), says that 'gun control' means putting the authority to decide who has the right to defend him or herself with a firearm into the hands of a government bureaucrat and that a more honest name for this process would be "victim disarmament." History teaches us that in every instance, from the slaughter of the Turks in Armenia to the Holocaust and many other instances before and after that, the person with the gun will always control the person without the gun and absent a firearm the strong will always control the weak.Our Jewish tradition tells us that righteous self-defense is not only permissible but an obligation: "If a murderer comes for you, strike him down first." (Talmud Sanhedrin 72a)??The Torah teaches: "Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor" (Leviticus 19:16). According to Rashi, this passage means that one who is able to help another escape harm and fails to do so is held culpable in the Heavenly Court for the harm he failed to prevent. When we disarm citizens, we place them in harm's way every day.
Jews are commanded by G-d to value all human life. How can one truly value human life if one advocates laws that leave people completely defenseless in the face of the criminal predators who roam our streets and break into our homes? That these laws are promulgated and advocated by those who are protected by armed guards around the clock is the height of hypocrisy.Newtown was a tragedy, but both logic and analysis show that the number of lives saved by allowing Americans to retain their right to bear arms is much larger than the number of lives lost as a result of guns that are misused in pursuit of an evil purpose. There are many other factors that need to be addressed when we talk about Newtown and other incidents of this nature.
Not surprisingly, some of them are derived directly from the misguided social policies put in place by the very lawmakers who now want to compound the problem of violence in our communities, especially in those communities where well meaning social policies have torn the fabric of our social order.?In my opinion, this mindless push for 'gun control' is shameful, and a rabbinate that ignores the cold facts that surround this controversy and takes the easy, emotional way out is acting contrary to what our history and literature teach us and is complicit in the larger tragedies that will unfold if they succeed.
Judy Aron, West Hartford CT